The Brown & White

Lehigh administrators support drunk driving - not intentionally or through any official policy - but by turning a blind eye to the aggravating, intolerably inefficient bus route that transports students to a home Lehigh-Lafayette game.

Let me explain, and Lehigh administrators, I hope you listen.

Flash back to last November, when 40 to 50 buses lined up along Packard Avenue to take our one-day-only, eager fans to the annual Lehigh-Laf football game.

Students are stuffed into the buses' seats - brown sweatshirts, wooly mittens and hidden flasks included. When it's time, one bus after another begins the slow caravan ride to our archrival's stadium in Easton.

The process is easy: Get a ticket. Get a seat. Get a ride to the game.

Now go back another year to November 2007, when the big game was right on Lehigh's campus, with the same thousand students attempting to watch our players. Instead of 40 buses, maybe one-fourth that number rotates through Asa Packer Campus to take students over to Goodman.

Picture this Saturday morning: People are drunk, so they're more aggressive. People are tired, so they get snippy quickly. People are cold, so they complain easily. And now they are waiting in line for one of the maybe 10 buses to pick them up.

It's an unappealing scene, but what choice do students have? They suck it up and get in line to wait.

And wait.

Some drunken fool starts shoving the guy in front of him in line, and by the time a bus finally stops, the crowd has become a mob of overly anxious students. They swarm the sides of the bus, its bumpers and its windows.

Two years ago, Lehigh administrators, you attempted to calm the chaos by stopping the bus route for the morning.

Well that's just not a reasonable move. I know you want a packed stadium, so you have to start the buses going again. And when you do, it's just a longer wait with angrier, crankier, colder people in line.

What happens next?

A few students start hitchhiking, trekking on foot over our dear South Mountain, while others opt out of attending the game entirely.

Or in a worse case - yet highly probable situation - tipsy students attempt to drive their wasted friends in cars to the game.

This is not a joke, Lehigh. You need to understand that people will not wait an hour to get a bus ride to somewhere two minutes away. They'll find another way to get there, and while keys, gas and easy parking in the grass are present, that way will be a vehicle.

I know what some of you are thinking: Get a DD already, you immature college kids. But this isn't a birthday party or a summer BBQ - it's Lehigh-Laf! Students are encouraged from the moment they step on this campus to celebrate the football tradition. Newsflash: "Celebrate" is "drink" in college speak.

I think students try to make the right decision in the beginning. They are aware cops set up checkpoints, and they value their lives and their friends' lives. They plan to take the bus because they know it's safest and smartest.

It's when the system fails, when the buses drive past stops and force students to continuously wait, that the option of driving comes to students' minds. By then, it's he-who-is-least-drunk that gets behind the wheel.

Driving is simply too tempting.

Here's what you may want to respond to my complaint: Grow up. You need to be patient and stop acting like an entitled college student. Act less belligerent, and the bus route will run more smoothly.

But honestly Lehigh, I don't think you can dismiss this situation like that.

You need to recognize the wants of your students. You need to realize that even though our impatient behavior seems like drunk, ignorable conduct to you, the bus-waiting problem is very real to us. We are going to attempt to solve it.

You need to be proactive, take away the temptation to drive and put student safety above your policy. Because right now, you are being unreasonable.

You give us a week to celebrate, a whole seven preceding days of debauchery and events. But then, on game day, the reason for the hoopla and craziness, you expect us to line up like first graders going to get their cartons of 2 percent milk from the nice cafeteria ladies.

It's contradictory, and it's a problem.

You may be inclined to look the other way because our behavior that week is unbecoming and obnoxious. But Lehigh, I've seen too many friends get behind the wheel drunk, and I'm pretty worried about how that number will escalate on game day.

My little "that's not safe" talks don't deter anyone from drunk driving. However, throwing in a couple extra buses this Lehigh-Laf will.

This problem is fixable, Lehigh. Please do it.